Like, way more than I expected. A second skill bar (necessary in this game IMO), a credit cap of 350,000 (with the rest in escrow), extremely limited numbers of special commendations for buying new gear (each planet has its own commendation), and instant fleet travel. Character creation is limited to only TWO slots! That's even worse than I expected. Race options are limited. Character Legacy options are limited.

You know the one thing that really pisses me off about this, though? I don't care that a ton of convenience and cosmetic things are behind a paywall. What really gets me is that there is no way to trade in-game money for the micro-transaction currency. If that was an option (like in GW2), I'd be fine with all of this.

It's mostly trolling since this was a feature in basically every Bioware game, except oddly enough, Mass Effect 2 where people complained, at great length, that they wanted to be able to take their helmets off in conversation (so much so that they gave away a lot of helmets that don't cover your face with purchase of Dr. Pepper, and one of the DLC item packs was a piecemeal suit of armor that you could do without the helmet on.)

It seems like these policies were set specifically by corporate suits well aware that what a lot of people wanted from SW:TOR was to get in, play through the story or stories, and then get out, and they tried to figure out how to squeeze as much money as possible from these people.

DCUO also limited character slots to two. It's fairly unlikely (though possible) that I'll actually get two characters all the way through their storylines, but we'll see. Same thing goes for the credit cap in DCUO (though it wasn't that bad since almost all the purchasable loot sucked). Limited races, meh.

The skill bar and travel limitations make me a sad panda, though.

So if I simply buy the game, will that put me in this "middle tier"? I think Amazon will have it on the BF sale for $6.